


Dreams In Which I'm Dying Are The Best I Ever Had

by ineptshieldmaid



Series: Of Heroes and Queens [13]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-02
Updated: 2009-03-02
Packaged: 2017-10-13 13:34:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineptshieldmaid/pseuds/ineptshieldmaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dreams stop when they come home: for Susan, at least, the dreams stop.</p><p>Fair warning: this fic is very morbid. Contains a lot of death, both in and out of dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreams In Which I'm Dying Are The Best I Ever Had

**Author's Note:**

> I've recorded an MP3 of this fic: you can find it [on the audiofic archive](http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/dreams-in-which-im-dying)

The dreams stop when they come home: for Susan, at least, the dreams stop.

She does not know what Lucy dreams of, or if she dreams at all: her sister's eyes are hollow, and she sleeps by day and wanders the house at night. Susan knows she is in the wardrobe room, and tells herself she is in the playroom. Once or twice, she hears Peter wake up shouting, his voice carrying across the hall. Some mornings, she finds Edmund dozing by the hearth, and when she tells him he ought to be in bed, he shakes his head and tells her not to play mother anymore.

But for Susan, the dreams stop.

Oh, she still dreams: dreams of falling and flying and waking up naked on trains. These are familiar dreams, the stuff of England. She dreams of cakes made with real butter, and of her bedroom at home, of standing up before her class with her hem hanging down. She dreams of London, of air-raids and fires and standing over her own parents' graves. She wakes up with her heart racing and her hands clenched, and breathes a sigh of relief as she goes back to sleep.

* * *

She has an arrow on the string, her brothers before her and Trumpkin beside her with drawn bow. It is all so familiar, the wood beneath her hand and the mail on her chest, and some part of her that was missing has come home at last.

Queen Susan's hand falters at the last moment: the great bear rears up before her, and here is the reality which her dreams had forgotten. The bow in her hand, the arrow in flesh; blood and exhilaration, the screams of the dying, the reproach in the dumb beasts' eyes. And always, the fear: _what if it were one of ours_?

The sovereign power over life and death: no one ever asked if she had wanted it. No one ever asked if she _deserved_ it.

* * *

Susan dreams of her brothers dying. She sees Peter falling on the battlefield, sees him run through in the joust, sees him shot from the battlements and going down with his ship. She dreams of Edmund executed, dreams him stabbed in a brawl, dreams him shot from his horse on a dark night.

Susan dreams of Lucy: dying in childbed, poisoned on her throne, cut down with a sword as she stands in the gates of Cair Paravel. She dreams of Lucy, tied down and her throat slit, on a table carved from stone.

She keeps a newspaper cutting by her bed: Thirty killed and injured in railway crash. The paper is faded, crumpled and frayed at the edges. Susan does not know what she will do when it falls apart at last.


End file.
